a fashionelle: lulu

in the winter of 2008, i accompanied my boyfriend (at the time) to his barbershop. since he insisted on just a walk-in, rather than an appointment, and it was obviously the fave hair-joint for the local seniors, i was tremendously bored and fervently reached for an outdated issue of W magazine. I had no idea that one, miniscule feature would change my creative future forever.

lulu at work

flipping through the pages, observing every detail as this was the most engrossing subject matter available, (much better than watching grey locks fall to the floor), i came across one of those pages that gives a quick review of interesting haps, publications, or people in recent culture--aka, my quick pop-history source. in the bottom right hand corner, almost cut off by the fold of the binding was a photo of the cover of a textile designer's soon-to-be-published book. it was beautiful and i had to know more.

the designer's name is lulu de kwiatkowski, a parsons school of design BFA (studio art) graduate (holla!), world traveler, textile + wallpaper + artist extraordinaire. splitting her childhood between the hamptons and the bahamas, she was constantly exposed to vibrant/earthy colors, patterns, and just interesting things. after her own textile company celebrated its 10th anniversary, it was deemed necessary that the world learn about the creative processes of the artist behind her wildly popular prints.

i received this book as a christmas gift in 2009 and refer to it on an addictively (i think i just made up this word) regular basis. you're about to see why.

snippit of the engaging cover

i feel like lulu's anonymous mentor-ee. she obviously loves yellow, red, pattern, handwriting, collaging, fauna, vintage, intricate drawing, and figures as much as i do. maybe we're secretly related or something. all of the above images i took with my camera from her book, as only a TINY sampling is available on amazon.com, excluding some of my favorites. The book, should you want to look it up, recommend it, or purchase it is entitled Lulu, published by Ammo Books, and is 192 full-color, giant-sized, incredible pages.

Now that you know her artistic side, here is the kind of product you can expect from her design company, called Lulu dK. these are all fabric prints, prints-in-progress, or print-promos. i sourced these images from her blog, trailofinspiration.com. i could have posted 90,000,000 more images, but not only would that start to look sketchy, it's a lot more fun to find it yourself!! go check out her blog, the lulu dk website, or best of all, her BOOK!